Why Are There So Many Ugly Churches?

Ordinary Catholics must already be aware of the changes that have taken place in church architecture over recent decades. The architecture of Relativist space, like the universal model it embodies, is homogenous, directionless and value-free. A Relativist church building downplays or even denies the concept of sacred space, rejects linear forms, and is designed so that every part of it appears to be of equal importance. Outside it will resemble the local library or sports stadium, thereby proclaiming 'nothing special here'. Inside the people 'gather round' the plain and unadorned altar, having hardly noticed as they passed the Tabernacle, and the message is the same.

Once gathered, there is apparently nowhere 'beyond' to aim for because the circular or semi-circular liturgical space cannot suggest this possibility. The subjectivism of the Modern Age favours circular forms because in a Relativist universe there is no truth 'out there'. The denial of the transcendent vision is inherent in the form of the contemporary church building and the space it creates. This same blocking of the route to the transcendent is also the result of sanctuary re-orderings in traditional churches.

Read the rest of Carl Olson's interview with Moyra Doorly here.

Journalist and architect Moyra Doorly is the author of No Place For God: The Denial of the Transcendent in Modern Church Architecture (Ignatius Press, 2007), a critique and examination of the banality and ugliness that is evident in so many modern Catholic parishes and cathedrals. In No Place For God, Doorly traces the principles of modern architecture to the ideas of space that spread rapidly during the twentieth century, seeing a parallel between the desacralization of the heavens (and consequently of churches) and the mass inward search for a god of one's own. 

 Via Insight Scoop's post about the altar for the beatification of Cardinal Newman.

For another example of an ugly church go here.